NORDUnet network for research and education opens with Alcatel-Lucent solution

The Nordic national network for research and education NORDUnet has opened one of the world’s most powerful data networks. The network, based on the Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) transport service switch and reconfigurable add-drop multiplex (ROADM) solutions, allow researchers at universities in the Nordic countries to further participate in international science projects within multiple fields like medicine, high energy physics, environmental research and astronomy.

Alcatel-Lucent’s equipment increases the flexibility and re-configurability of the IP-based research network. Furthermore Alcatel-Lucent is taking part in the future development of the network regarding increased capacity and flexibility.

The project enhances the high-speed optical packet connectivity among the research centers located in Copenhagen (Denmark), where it will link to the GÉANT 2 pan European research and education network, in Helsinki (Finland), Oslo (Norway), and Stockholm (Sweden) and will extend to Hamburg (Germany). As a result, networking services for researchers are facilitated and new state-of the-art applications, such as distributed grid computing, are made available to process information in their investigations.

“The new NORDUnet offers enough capacity to let for example, astronomers to follow radio telescopes around the world live from their university. The same is possible for physicists that are participating in experiments at CERN, the European center for high-energy research. Environmental researchers will be able to analyse data on our climate much faster, and within medicine Nordic experts can assist colleagues around the world in complicated operations,” said René Buch, CEO at NORDUnet.

The network has more than one million users – students and researchers – at universities in the Nordic countries. The total capacity of the network is 1 Terabit/s and is expected to reach 10 Terabit/s within several years. From the beginning NORDUnet offers the institutions capacities of 10 Gigabit/s. In the near future NORDUnet will be able to offer capacities of 40 Gigabit/s and the network is designed to deliver up to 100 40 Gigabit/s within a few years.

“The new network offers researchers in the Nordic countries an infrastructure that opens a wide range of new possibilities to participate in even the biggest international eScience projects and maintain a research environment in the Nordic countries on the highest international level. This prevents the Nordic area from ending up as an appendix to the international champion’s league in science. We now have the means to exchange and analyse data in collaboration with the leading research institutions around the world,” said René Buch.

“We want to collaborate with a business partner that is prepared to develop and test new technologies. This enables NORDUnet to stay one of the leading data network in the world. It promotes the Nordic researchers’ possibilities worldwide and the network is also a research project of international scale,” said René Buch about the reason for choosing Alcatel-Lucent as network supplier.

“Progresses in research and education are driven by the ability of researchers, who must be supported by high-performance and robust networks to access innovative tools for their investigations,” said Romano Valussi, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s optics activities. “NORDUnet benefits from a converged platform that guarantees the versatility to support any research applications, now and in the future, regardless of the underneath technology.“

Alcatel-Lucent has deployed its 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS) and reconfigurable add-drop multiplexing (ROADM) and the 1626 Light Manager (LM) to help NORDUnet address increasing demand for new IP based multimedia applications and enable faster service provisioning with the highest quality of service.

The Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS aggregates Ethernet-based traffic in the point of presence (PoPs) of the NORDUnet network and perform multicast service delivery, allowing circuits and packets to be provisioned in an extremely flexible way and in any proportion that may be required. For long-haul traffic transmission, Alcatel-Lucent deployed its 1626 LM, that operates up to 40 Gbit/s and uses ROADM technology, along with fully-tunable tuning features, to remotely add and drop traffic as service demand evolves, without impacting network performance. The network will evolve to fully tunable ROADM functionality. This will minimize manual adjustments and operational costs as network administration can be performed directly from the network operation center (NOC).

The Alcatel-Lucent solution is managed by the 1350 management suite enabling to manage packets, TDM and wavelength services.